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The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging ecosystem. It used to be that if I followed a /. link to an article on a blog that I enjoyed, I'd immediate

The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging ecosystem. It used to be that if I followed a /. link to an article on a blog that I enjoyed, I'd immediately subscribe to their RSS feed. I'd made a collection of a few hundred blogs related to computer science alone this way. At the time I was on a mac, and NetNewsWire was THE RSS reader of choice (backed by Google Reader for syncing feed info) and every morning I'd click on the folder which housed those 100s of blogs, and would probably find 10-20 posts, skim through them in minutes, only reading those that seemed interesting to me in depth. NNN also made it extremely easy to open the post on the original website in a background tab, so I'd keep opening them in the background if I wanted to read it, and then just go through all the background tabs. It was an amazingly efficient system of following hundreds of independent blogs that were offering uncurated first person information. I haven't found anything today that comes close to recreating that system, and I can't imagine even finding the kinds of articles I did through this process (an example...I had an HP MediaSmart server, and one day someone randomly posted a How to on replacing the CPU on it with a newer CPU...it was an easy process that cost me about $7 to buy the compatible faster chip on eBay, and a couple of dollars for the heatsink gel). And lo and behold, a week later, everything was running so much better. Changing the CPU on the Mediasmart server was something I wouldn't even have considered searching for, and even if I did, I'm not sure Google would have turned up anything useful.

dflock 4y ago
RSS didn't die, though? I still do this and it works fine? This is optional - but I use Miniflux as a locally hosted RSS server, so that I can keep the feed list etc on there and access it from my phone, desktop etc... using my client of choice.
- kenniskrag 4y ago
  Which client do you use? I'm searching one for android.
  - dzikimarian 4y ago
    I installed miniflux recently and for now I'm using its web interface, shortcut to which I pinned to my launcher. It's very fast, so possibly I'll stay just with it.
  - crtasm 4y ago
    I'm pretty happy with Handy News Reader, gets used every day. Appears to be on the play store as well as on f-droid.
  - dflock 4y ago
    I'm currently using [Focus Reader](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=allen.town.focus.reader&gl=us https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=allen.town.foc...), which seems pretty great, so far.
- eropple 4y ago
  > RSS didn't die, though? I still do this and it works fine? If your publishing platform supports it, RSS is still pretty good. On the other hand, I'm building my current blog with NextJS (both to learn it and because I like React a lot more than I do the Wordpress loop) and I am making sure to do RSS...but it's a lot harder than it used to be.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    Why is it a lot harder? It seems like if you used just about any ready-to-go blogging platform it would be solved for you. And if you implement your own platform you need to generate a feed which is just as difficult as it was 20 years ago.
    - eropple 4y ago
      It is a lot harder because you have to do it. If you don't care about it, you're not going to do it. If you don't do it, there won't be RSS support. And so, the circle shrinks.
ufmace 4y ago
> The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging ecosystem. Since when is RSS "destroyed"? I still use it every day. Okay Google Reader specifically died. But honestly it wasn't all that great. There are dozens of other RSS readers that still work fine.
- dhosek 4y ago
  What bugged me was when Apple removed RSS from Safari. I used to have a menubar list of sites that I would read regularly and I could go to the bottom and select open all in RSS and read everything. Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really feels like a step backwards.
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    > Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really feels like a step backwards. Not if you use a web-based RSS reader (I use Nextcloud News for this purpose) since that is always just one link away on any browser you might happen to use. This is far more convenient than having your 'feeds' in a specific browser on a specific device.
- iwre0 4y ago
  Ok but I detected that now there are less posts than 10 years ago, and I have the same feeds or more People get old, and do not write new posts in their blogs Young people, most dont use blogs, they use fb, ig, ..
  - ufmace 4y ago
    I do find it plausible that there are fewer things being posted in RSS-able blogs than 10 years ago, but if so, you wouldn't be able to tell that way. Especially if what you're following is a lot of individual blogs, it's pretty normal that at least some people get tired of blogging for any number of reasons over the course of a decade and stop or slow down. If you want to keep the same amount of total content, you have to constantly look for new blogs to follow.
ocdtrekkie 4y ago
It's noteworthy this blogger actually tells me if I don't change the settings on my RSS feed reader, he will ban me from reading his site. I decided to subscribe, but this is the first time I've ever had to change the update interval in my feed reader. This isn't really a shining example of good encouragement for people to use RSS feeds.
- ubermonkey 4y ago
  What did he want changed? Were you polling too frequently?
  - ocdtrekkie 4y ago
    Well, I'm polling my feed reader's default. Which is every 15 minutes. Many RSS feeds for large sites post more than ten stories a day but only show the last ten stories on their feed, so checking regularly is critical. However, this author specifies I may get IP banned if I check his feed more than once a day: https://cheapskatesguide.org/policy-on-robots.html https://cheapskatesguide.org/policy-on-robots.html
    - ubermonkey 4y ago
      Wow that's just... special. WTF?
lelandfe 4y ago
Dunno why so much of this is in past tense – everything you named still works the same. I use NNN every day (though my reading list is smaller: around 30). If there's a blog that doesn't have a feed, I'll just use a scraper to make one for me. Works like a charm!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
soapdog 4y ago
I don't know if you're aware that NetNewsWire is being developed again. It has been a joy to use it both on macOS and iOS.

dflock 4y ago

RSS didn't die, though? I still do this and it works fine? This is optional - but I use Miniflux as a locally hosted RSS server, so that I can keep the feed list etc on there and access it from my phone, desktop etc... using my client of choice.

kenniskrag 4y ago
Which client do you use? I'm searching one for android.
- dzikimarian 4y ago
  I installed miniflux recently and for now I'm using its web interface, shortcut to which I pinned to my launcher. It's very fast, so possibly I'll stay just with it.
- crtasm 4y ago
  I'm pretty happy with Handy News Reader, gets used every day. Appears to be on the play store as well as on f-droid.
- dflock 4y ago
  I'm currently using [Focus Reader](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=allen.town.focus.reader&gl=us https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=allen.town.foc...), which seems pretty great, so far.
eropple 4y ago
> RSS didn't die, though? I still do this and it works fine? If your publishing platform supports it, RSS is still pretty good. On the other hand, I'm building my current blog with NextJS (both to learn it and because I like React a lot more than I do the Wordpress loop) and I am making sure to do RSS...but it's a lot harder than it used to be.
- kevincox 4y ago
  Why is it a lot harder? It seems like if you used just about any ready-to-go blogging platform it would be solved for you. And if you implement your own platform you need to generate a feed which is just as difficult as it was 20 years ago.
  - eropple 4y ago
    It is a lot harder because you have to do it. If you don't care about it, you're not going to do it. If you don't do it, there won't be RSS support. And so, the circle shrinks.

ufmace 4y ago

> The destruction of RSS greatly damaged the Blogging ecosystem. Since when is RSS "destroyed"? I still use it every day. Okay Google Reader specifically died. But honestly it wasn't all that great. There are dozens of other RSS readers that still work fine.

dhosek 4y ago
What bugged me was when Apple removed RSS from Safari. I used to have a menubar list of sites that I would read regularly and I could go to the bottom and select open all in RSS and read everything. Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really feels like a step backwards.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  > Having to use a dedicated RSS reader really feels like a step backwards. Not if you use a web-based RSS reader (I use Nextcloud News for this purpose) since that is always just one link away on any browser you might happen to use. This is far more convenient than having your 'feeds' in a specific browser on a specific device.
iwre0 4y ago
Ok but I detected that now there are less posts than 10 years ago, and I have the same feeds or more People get old, and do not write new posts in their blogs Young people, most dont use blogs, they use fb, ig, ..
- ufmace 4y ago
  I do find it plausible that there are fewer things being posted in RSS-able blogs than 10 years ago, but if so, you wouldn't be able to tell that way. Especially if what you're following is a lot of individual blogs, it's pretty normal that at least some people get tired of blogging for any number of reasons over the course of a decade and stop or slow down. If you want to keep the same amount of total content, you have to constantly look for new blogs to follow.

ocdtrekkie 4y ago

It's noteworthy this blogger actually tells me if I don't change the settings on my RSS feed reader, he will ban me from reading his site. I decided to subscribe, but this is the first time I've ever had to change the update interval in my feed reader. This isn't really a shining example of good encouragement for people to use RSS feeds.

ubermonkey 4y ago
What did he want changed? Were you polling too frequently?
- ocdtrekkie 4y ago
  Well, I'm polling my feed reader's default. Which is every 15 minutes. Many RSS feeds for large sites post more than ten stories a day but only show the last ten stories on their feed, so checking regularly is critical. However, this author specifies I may get IP banned if I check his feed more than once a day: https://cheapskatesguide.org/policy-on-robots.html https://cheapskatesguide.org/policy-on-robots.html
  - ubermonkey 4y ago
    Wow that's just... special. WTF?

lelandfe 4y ago

Dunno why so much of this is in past tense – everything you named still works the same. I use NNN every day (though my reading list is smaller: around 30). If there's a blog that doesn't have a feed, I'll just use a scraper to make one for me. Works like a charm!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

soapdog 4y ago

I don't know if you're aware that NetNewsWire is being developed again. It has been a joy to use it both on macOS and iOS.